My payslip as a doctor in Feb 2021 during COVID

[Juniordoc]

See attached image. Yes this is for full-time work with weekends and nights in the currently stretched working conditions that the NHS provides.

This does not include the expenses and sacrifices of a six year medical degree. On top of that, we have to pay out of pocket for our own GMC membership, medical defence union, postgrad exams and revision courses, conferences and courses.

Please get behind us and support the strikes. We are burnout, exhausted and struggling to live

Very true. Senior colleagues have a lot to answer for in terms of why life can be hellish for the most junior of junior doctors.

There should be a mid stage term for doctors who are currently classed as junior because we can't have a sensible conversation talking about the mass of them as if this pay slip is representative.

I support the junior doctors strike 100%.
You are all worth so much more than you are paid and even more than you are asking for. The commitment you make when you join this profession is unbelievably selfless and kind - you're all worth your weight in gold.
All that training, studying, expense, missing your loved ones, your freedoms..
I see you!
I hope every single person on this thread who's throwing shade gets to eat their words. When you next need a&e try to remember what you said about that doctor who's putting you back together when they should have gone home an hour ago and what they're 'worth'.
My recent experience in a&e had a profound affect on me - I was treated by a young man who's knowledge and compassion was first class, all the while apologising he couldn't have helped me faster. I'll never forget him and he's one of so many, treated like ungrateful slaves by this government. We should all be marching in the streets of London for you, all of us, round and around parliament in shifts with our children in tow until the politicians have no option but to fix this shameful injustice.
Thank you Junior Doctor x

It is when the current young people, at this rate, probs won’t ever retire. So what’s the point.

Their end game should take their pension into account and if it doesn't matter to them (not sure they'd have the option of an alternative career in finance if this is really the case!) then there's a source of funding to help meet their currently unrealistic expectation which is going to cause patient deaths without actually retaining them.

I am talking about the ballpark debt a medic ramps up over the course of their pre-F1 years.

I am a band 5 nurse and earn more than you.
It really is shocking, and the £25 for parking is a kick in the teeth!!

I asked specifically if the OP had student debt to repay. My question was not a general question.

Of course it is. You can’t pay the rent from the pension you might get in 40 years time. Nor is it any consolation when you’re burnt out.

Plus it's not what it was and they keep changing it so I think people need to ignore that as an incentive.

As a student midwife I support you wholeheartedly. That payslip made me feel embarrassed to work for the NHS.

I think there's a huge misunderstanding of what junior doctors are and what they do. They don't scurry around after consultants shadowing or observing.

They're actual qualified doctors, on wards, reviewing patients, making plans, preforming procedures and prescribing drugs independently.

They always look exhausted, stressed, and on the edge. I really feel for you OP. It's not a job I could do, far too much pressure. I'd crumble under it.

I agree that’s a smaller salary than I would have expected for a job carrying so much responsibility. As others have said though, it would be interesting to know how quickly that will rise to figures unobtainable for many jobs. Without knowing the salary structure it’s hard to compare.

Also, lots of jobs don’t receive additional pay for unsociable hours, or time spent working at home to keep up (teachers etc) So it’s good you do receive this.

I do support your cause.

Absolutely support you

I support you and your colleagues.

My DH earns the same selling TV's to people in a well known tech shop.

The government actually wants this argument though, because it means they can say that market based salaries in a private system would be fairer to doctors in paying them what their skills can command.

It’s also interesting to compare NHS salaries to what drs get paid in industry.

to give an example my sister is mid 30’s & transitioned to a pharma company and her package looks like this:

base salary £150k
bonus approx £60k
options £25k
Employer pension contribution 6%

All her training and insurances are paid, she works 9-6 more or less, 3 days working from home and has started a work funded MBA, where she gets a 2 paid days off per month to study.

It’s not a lot but it’s comparable to other jobs after 6 years at uni but no experience. You’re also in a good pension scheme.
After 2-3 years you already take home £2700, it would take you decades to have a similar increase in some « normal jobs ». Even stressful jobs with lots of overtime etc…

Unfortunately it’s a fact that salaries don’t reflect how useful workers are to society, just look at football players for example.

What is really shocking is the state of the NHS and working conditions for ALL NHS staff, but asking for a 35% pay rise is not going to fix any of that.

There should be a mid stage term for doctors who are currently classed as junior because we can't have a sensible conversation talking about the mass of them as if this pay slip is representative.

Yes, the term 'junior doctor' is very misleading and does no one any favours. Is your child's teacher called a junior teacher? Do we have junior accountants, or junior engineers? Of course not. Call FYs 'Early Career Doctors', as other professions refer to colleagues in their first two years in the profession. Then just call them doctors! Perhaps even senior doctors if they've done two years as speciality/registrar.

If that's the case, why are we not pushing for part insuranced-based in the UK?

Agreed. The public needs to realise we will still not hang on to these doctors if their demands are met. Yet because they are so militant and prepared to hold a gun to patients in this reckless and irresponsible way, money is all we'll talk about. And it won't fix it. And they won't get this request met. And people will die on this hill and it won't be the junior doctors.

It's like they've been infiltrated by the DUP. There's no point digging in for something that will never happen and won't work while patients die and the goodwill of the public is slowly exhausted.

Why won't the op post their current wage slip? Presumably they're still a junior doctor. Would it weaken their argument? I find that kind of half story emotionally manipulative and patronising to the public.

You say you're now a consultant and talking about having that kind of payslip more than ten years ago. Not more than twenty years ago. I find that interesting too. I bet you didn't have it for long.

Christ, I earned that 15 years ago working in a junior managerial position for a bank! I joined at 18 without a degree and worked my way up so it did take me a long time to earn a decent salary, but I had 15 years of an easy job, fun and social life along the way. I know things were different in the 80s but I think you can join as a graduate entrant now at 21 and go in on £40K, with nice office hours (obvs not exactly 9-5 but not comparable to a doctors job) and have a lovely life.

I know it's a vocation, but everything I hear from the news makes it sound unsustainable nowadays. Quite apart from the shifts - treating people in corridors and ambulances, working double shifts due to staff absence, general staff shortages - it sounds like the job from hell!

I am not even sure that throwing money at it would solve the problem. The NHS seems really broken and I assume some sort of major overhaul is the way forward. But paying an appropriate salary could be a good start, and could maybe attract more into the job which would solve some of the problems.

I'm not usually in favour of paying more as it will increase inflation and set unrealistic precedents, but it does seem as though junior doctors have problems on a whole different level. (That said, so do nurses and paramedics, and also teachers. The world economy is screwed and I'm seriously worried for the future).

Because any time anybody even dares to mention reform, Labour activists scream “America” and publish reams of posts about how many people go bankrupt every year because of medical costs.

Nobody is actually brave enough to have a conversation about it. Can’t you just see the HoC with Rayner screeching across the table about Tory scum privatising the NHS?

Fullfact have done a neat analysis of junior doctors pay:

fullfact.org/health/bma-junior-doctors-hourly-pay/

Gosh, this is a depressing, depressing read.

DS is 19 and loving loving loving his first year of medicine. We are a non medic family, and were - to our surprise - rather dismayed and fearful when he decided on medicine.
(Just writing that is awful. I thought it would be 100 % pride.) We’d read This is Going to Hurt. We took him to see Adam Kay. We watched the tv series, and his 16 yr old sister cried, and said ‘I’ll never see you once you become a doctor.” A family friend, a consultant (moving back to Greece post Brexit) tried to counsel him out of it.

I teach (I know, I know), and last parents evening one of my lovely 6 year olds’ parents asked me what oldest was studying. Medicine, I replied, knowing she is a doctor. ‘Oh dear’, she said.

When he was born, 20 years ago, who knew that this was where he would be. And who knew that this is how people would feel about this choice.

It was your end game I was questioning not theirs.

I don't suppose understanding the finance would be a problem for them. Many of them do have A stars in A Level maths after all. I'm more concerned about your understanding. Does the time value of money mean anything to you? They have to live NOW and their salaries are diminishing in REAL terms (26% erosion since 2008) Residual values (pensions) are a consideration but not the most important one when you are still trying to find your feet financially.

Yes, I was looking at a Band 2 position recently and with shift allowances I’d have been on around £32-35k - bloody fantastic salary!